Aiki of Ueshiba, Aunkai of Akuzawa, martial paths, life paths

Not long ago, lost in my reflexion about the body and its place in martial practice, I found a misknown text by Morihei Ueshiba : the text is about Shochikubai. 

After this experience, O Sensei quit training Aiki which until then was his main working tool.

By reading it over, the substansive content of the text called out to me, beyond the story of the mystical experience, it’s very close to Akuzawa Sensei’s path of work and research.

Both talk about an inner work, an inner strength, each with his words and life experiences but the common point remains in the direction it takes.

Akuzawa Sensei once told me « it’s been a long time since I no longer use my muscles, that’s the reason I don’t warm up anymore » and all you have to do is observe him on the tatami to feel the act of the strength springing from him. Ueshiba, in his time, insisted a lot on the springing techniques phenomenon that we find with Akuzawa.

Akuzawa talks a lot about the « work on self » just like Ueshiba, which himself referred to this with shintoism references and practices like for instance the « misogi » (purification of the body under a waterfall).

Nobuyoshi Tamura said that when he was studying with O sensei, as he was young, that 50 years separated them and their interests were different, he didn’t have any interest in philosophy of O sensei or the Shintoism practice.

Just like all young people, he said, what he wanted was to develop his physical strength by uncovering the mysteries of the power hidden in Ueshiba’s Aïkido. Having grown old in his turn, he understood why O sensei was interested in those subjects and what he was trying to teach them : how through Aïkido, they could free themselves from their illusions in order to begin the discovery of their reality without which strength cannot spring.

But it’s hard getting this voice to be heard because there is a whole aura of mysticism, of spirituality, that bothers.

Tamura Sensei’s testimony is a proof of that, because beyond age, I think we’re dealing with a state of mind problem above all else.

Yet still, all of this is the Ki, the energy. The energy is harmony, it is the reunion of opposites, of strength and softness, of darkness and light, and the will to be and be what we truly are.

In order to be able to use the Ki, we need to find harmony around us, and thus with ourselves.

The Aunkai doesn’t offer a work of bodybuilding or body training to achieve optimum results. It offers a work of awareness that goes through movements requiring an inner feeling, which deepens with time and goes beyond the physical structure.

Akuzawa’s « work on self » that we find in the path of Ueshiba’s Aiki, is a work of transformation of the inner self, of its capacity to go beyond its body, brain included, to reach its spirit, its « soul ».

The experience that O sensi lives in the text is just that.

This work aims at forgetting the ego (to be the best, the strongest) to become ourselves, to be able to feel how useless strength is when the perception of the energy, the ki, is present.

When the self manages to resolve its inner conflicts, those that bring it to the exterior conflicts, it can forget its will, it stops asking itself questions, it reaches the « don’t think » that Tamura Sensei preached on the tatami.

The work on the inner strength, on ourselves, which brings to the perception and the use of the energy is an interdisciplinary work in martial arts, it is the strength and the unavoidable interest of the Aunkai.

Keeping the balance of the tanren doesn’t ask to be muscular or simply to try to stand in equiliber, it asks to be able to feel the axis linking us from sky to earth, an axis that goes past the physical ones.

Akuzawa Sensei particularly likes to work among the nature. Among the nature one can feel the harmony, the energy that underlies everything.

Morihei Ueshiba didn’t have time to share his understanding of the depths of the aiki and its path, Akuzawa Sensei does it, through the gesture, without much words, but in these words, each takes all its meaning, which must not be altered, something that sadly was rendered difficult by translations and misunderstandings.

The Aunkai is a life path as much as a martial path, because the martial art seen by Akuzawa Sensei just like he was seen by Ueshiba is not an art of combat but an art of peace.

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Notes : Takemusu Aiki’s notebooks, Vol. 1 « the body and the saber according to Ueshiba Morei », pages 37-39. Published by Cenacle